When the Cold War ended, a number of Soviet Bloc countries liquidated their air force inventories, particularly of older-spec planes, while they made room for more Western-built planes. The upshot of that was that for a particularly narrow customer base, citizens could get their hands on Cold War-era Soviet fighter planes for less than a new Lamborghini. If you keep an eye on eBay, you can probably still find an old MiG for under a million bucks, although they’re a bit tough on the checkbook to keep them in the air.
However, Randy Ball and Fighter Jets, Inc. do exactly that, knocking fully operational MiG-17 fighters around the air show circuit annually. In one of many excellent airplane walkarounds by Erik Johnston (Lots of good storytelling; go watch a bunch of them), Ball goes over every nook and cranny of his MiG-17, a plane in which he has flown thousands of hours. Ball gives a ton of absolutely incredible and subtle information on the airplane that is invaluable coming from someone who lives to fly it.
I worked on that plane about 3 years ago.
He performed at the Air Show here at Randolph AFB and hurt the engine. I helped change the engine and reinstall the tail section.
BTW the Russians were not behind us in aircraft at that time several very inovative features that we still dont use.
Interesting stuff, I think his plane was also featured on “airplane repo” – and not in a good way.